Vignette

I’m running it in my head, over and over, like a movie trailer, like an instant replay of something that hasn’t happened yet.

I see the platform, the stairs down to the parking lot. I can feel the hum of the highway below my wheels, the muscle memory that takes me from on-ramp to travel lanes to off-ramp while my mind races on ahead.

I want to control it all – set the angle of the sun in the sky, engineer the perfect soundtrack. I want the camera that doesn’t exist to capture the brave set of my jaw and the squaring of my shoulders, the quick and confident click of my heels as I force myself forward, step by step, toward you.

If it were a movie, the audience would know our heroine’s tells—they’d know she’s quailing inside, second-guessing her moves and her words and her very presence.

But I’m going to do it. I’m going to do what’s hard, because the alternative says things about me I don’t like, things that make me too much like you.

Set the jaw, square the shoulders. Click, click.